The Blank Page

[Olie]

When applying tone or colour I like to set my brush opacity to 54% and my flow at around 20% (as a starting point) it allows you to apply colour/tone subtly and helps when trying to blend your colours together.

[elemento]

i like it, not sure, but i think still like the original better,

[dcloud]

I like the original, too. But it's nice to have something to practice the painting on. I'm not really a painter anyway. My style is more like this rough of Chip and Dale here.

[mcj]

My disclaimer: I'm not a painter, illustrator, etc. I've learned photography through trail & error and took very informal art classes, which taught me to see colours, etc. more accurately. I found the two disciplines complemented one another quite nicely, improving both sets of skills. Learning to be a better observer was the greatest asset.

That said, here are my opinions... NOT criticisms (I wish that I could draw & paint as well as you... perhaps someday ):
I prefer the original simply because the face is as rough as the rest of the image. If the whole thing were to become more "photo-realistic", then the working copy is off to a good start.

The scene is obviously a bright, sunny day. As an art instructor of mine used to say (very frequently): "Darker! Darker! Darker!".
The shadows under the 1st are fuller, but under the 2nd become more "illustrated", except for the face. The shadows cast over the face darken it more. The more obvious ones on the eyes are a nice touch. Even though the working nose is more 3D and stands out more, I miss the specular highlight of the original.

The working snout is more human-ish than chipmunk; I miss the arc that intersects the nose in the original. That, I feel, gave it a less-humanized look and a better sense of depth. The highlight & shadow work that make the lips stand out are good but I miss the freckles (seems more "youthful").

From a photographer's viewpoint, keep the shadows under the character darker, except where light from the surface it's resting upon lightly illuminates it. e.g. A little lighter where the light reflected off of the white paper shines up into the lower part of the face... and a small bit of the green grass just hints within the darkened shadows of the body.

The light & shadow work is the underpainting that the fur detail and such builds upon.

The original, being rough as it is, has a certain charm to it and works quite well. As I see it, if the more-realistic approach is followed, then prepare for a lot more work as everything else in the scene goes that way... unless you keep the rabbit rough to make it look like a toy — similar to the approach used in the strip "Calvin & Hobbes". (If you're not familiar with that reference: Calvin is a six year old boy and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger... real to him but appears as just a toy whenever someone else is in the frame.)

You've got quite the talent.
Best of luck with your lessons and whichever path(s) you choose.


Mike

[dcloud]

Update: I took some time to do some additional work to this piece after getting CS5.5, especially in the face area.



Here's something interesting I discovered when working on this document. The original document was done in Working CMYK, so whenever I saved it for the Web the colors came out faded. I changed this back to Monitor RGB and then did some Googling and discovered that when saving for Web I needed to convert the image to sRGB (check the box in the Save for Web dialogue) and then the image came out looking more vibrant.

[Dear]

Nice
Dawn